Christmas in the 80s ~ Bad hair, terrible music and Christmas Specials!
Radio Times cover from 1987 courtesy of Radio Times
The eighties for me – speaking as a person who has Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine and Type O Negative on her mp3 player – was a time of torture musically and as this clip from Top of the Pops Christmas special from 1983 ably demonstrates, I had every reason to be horrified…
It makes me shudder…
Christmas 1984 was dominated by the Band Aid single, Do They Know It’s Christmas. Here it is complete with horrifically big hair and appalling jackets pushed up the forearms of the super-cool artists of the time..
And if you’re watching David Van Day in I’m a Celeb at the moment, did you know he was a member of Bucks Fizz in the late eighties? Here the band are pre-David on the 1983 TOTP Christmas special.
The eighties show Strike It Lucky, hosted by Michael Barrymore, made several Christmas specials and here’s a clip from one of them with lots of little kids being very cute
And do you remember TV AM the forerunner to GMTV? Here’s a clip from Christmas Day in the eighties but you have to fast forward the first 60 seconds or so to get to it. In it, Anne Diamond remarks that she doesn’t really like mince pies. She later went on to become very fond indeed of pies…
If you remember that, you’ll probably remember that TV channels used to close down overnight, so here from 1984 is BBC’s Christmas closedown sequence…
This clip is of the end of Blankety Blank on Christmas Day 1984 and an introduction to other BBC shows that day and the start of the Hi De Hi special…
And here’s what you would have watched on BBC1 on Christmas day in 1987
ITV’s Christmas night line up that year featured Dennis Norden and Inspector Morse…
Here’s Christmas day on 1988 featuring trailers and the news about the Lockerbie disaster and the Christmas weather
The Mike Yarwood show was a vital component to Christmas in the eighties and here he is at the end of his show in 1981. The clip leads on to what’s on ‘Holiday Monday’ on BBC1 including Grange Hill, Val Doonican, Terry and June and Only Fools and Horses
The Two Ronnies also made Christmas over that decade and here’s a clip from their 1982 special…
As did Morcambe and Wise…
The soaps had some brilliant Christmas episodes in the 80s and here’s one of my favourite clips from the scene in Eastenders where Den hands Angie divorce papers…
Crossroads was in full swing in the 80s too. Here’s a clip from the 1980 Christmas episode
You may well have received a Sinclair Spectrum in the eighties as a pressie. See it advertised here…
And have a look at the pressies Woolies were trying to sell us in 1982
And 1983…
Or maybe you bought your festive booze from Asda…
But if you were a kid in the 80s, this He Man and She Ra special was probably on your must-see list…
You more than likely watched the Rainbow Christmas special too in 1987. See the end of and some ads here…
And T Bag’s special in 1988 starring Elizabeth Estensen who now plays Diane in Emmerdale
Do you have any fond memories of TV shows at Christmas in the 80s?
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Cannon & Ball were my favorite in the 80`s or was it the 90`s cant
remember! But I loved em… Oh and yep fools & horses were fantastic,
dont see them anymore, used too look forward to watching in them days..now, I gotta say..Id rather play games & have fun without the tv on, on christmas day…cos its the same ol films, Nuffing that
good to watch in my opinon.
[...] on from yesterday’s Christmas in the 80’s article, today, we are looking at the next decade on. The hairdos hadn’t improved much by the 90s [...]
The Worst Decade
By : Aishah Bowron
The worst musical era of all times were the Eighties. I disliked that decade. The only good bands and artists that I liked from the Eighties are Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Europe, Guns N’Roses, Michael Jackson and Prince and that’s about it.
All the best rock bands came out of the Seventies. The Seventies were better than the Eighties in my opinion, producing proper rock bands like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Trapeze, Free, AC/DC, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, Whitesnake, Motorhead etc. The Eighties were about synthesizers and poppy little sounds. Synthesizers were boring instruments because you couldn’t jump around with it like you would do with a guitar. Even worse there were all these horrible bands like the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Depeche Mode, OMD, Kajagoogoo and many similar acts in the Eighties. Then you got the Stock Aitken and Waterman nonsense, which drove me bleeding mad. They were responsible for producing cheeseball hits like Never Gonna Give You Up and I Should Be So Lucky..
The musical scene in the Eighties was a joke. You had record companies and managers who were more important than the artists. These managers acted like dictators telling you what to do like polishing your music and looking a bit. You had to live by the strict Draconian rules forever doing TV shows , playback performances and photo sessions. It was too nice and too tame. You had no control over your music because you had to play the way the manager wanted you to sound. The Eighties were backlashed against the guitar because the producer toned it down to make room for the synths. That is amongst the reason why I think the Eighties were awful. The Eighties is a decade not worth remembering.
The Worst Decade Of All Time
By : Aishah Bowron
The worst musical era of all times were the Eighties. I disliked that decade. The only good bands and artists that I liked from the Eighties are Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Europe, Guns N’Roses, Michael Jackson and Prince and that’s about it.
All the best rock bands came out of the Seventies. The Seventies produced proper pop and rock bands like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Trapeze, Free, AC/DC, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, Whitesnake, Motorhead, etc (but not Evil Glitter). The Seventies were about the music, not about marketing and that was a good thing. Bands from the Sixties and Seventies cared about and were enthusiastic about the music. The Eighties were about synthesizers and poppy little sounds. Synthesizers were boring instruments because you couldn’t jump around with it like you would do with a guitar. Even worse there were all these horrible bands like the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Depeche Mode, OMD, Kajagoogoo, Thompson Twins, Howard Jones and many similar acts in the Eighties. Then you got the Stock Aitken and Waterman nonsense, which drove me bleeding mad. They were responsible for producing cheeseball hits like Never Gonna Give You Up and I Should Be So Lucky..
The musical scene in the Eighties was a joke. You had record companies and managers who were more important than the artists. These managers acted like dictators telling you what to do like polishing your music and looking a bit. You had to live by the strict Draconian rules forever doing TV shows , playback performances and photo sessions. It was too nice and too tame. You had no control over your music because you had to play the way the manager wanted you to sound. The Eighties were backlashed against the guitar because the producer toned it down to make room for the synths. That is amongst the reason why I think the Eighties were awful.
The Eighties seem to forget that the foundation of the music business is music. The Eighties were so corporate, uncaring, insensitive and thoughtless about the origins of music. You had graduates from business colleges who happened to favour commerce than art and I don’t think it was a very good thing.
Why can’t the Eighties be more like the Seventies ? . The Eighties were a horrible decade. You had George Bloody Michael and Simon Bloody Le Bon and Tony Fucking Hadley prancing on stage like great steaming nellies. The Eighties broght really horrible memories for me musically. The Eighties was a decade not worth remembering